A thought about buses and being blindsided

As we start the month of November, I was thinking it might be interesting to do some kind of “thankfulness” theme for the whole month and I had the first one going through my brain off and on yesterday….phrases would come to me and I would jot them down.

And then I sat down this morning and…nothing about it seems right anymore.

So I sat here praying for a while and I am thinking it is time to share a little slice of life learned on the streets of London quite a number of  years ago.

The Lord and my sweet husband granted me the opportunity to travel to that city with Sarah and a group of high school students and parents in the spring of her senior year.

Thanks to the knowledge and skill of our teacher/leader who knows the city inside out and upside down, we saw as much as is humanly possible and with much learning and laughter and joy.

But one of the harrowing memories I do have is from the near death experiences of crossing narrow streets without remembering the flow of traffic is different across the pond.

We don’t realize how naturally our inclination is, as we cross a street, to look to the left and thinking all is clear and our bodies begin to lean forward; we scan the distance to our right to determine safety in the far lane.

Well…in London, invariably this habit is rudely interrupted by a large double-decker bus blasting by within inches of your nose while the entire group you are traveling alongside yells………

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I could make the font bigger on that…

It would have to be at least 85 to truly make my point.

And that is what it is to be blind-sided.

We are going along in the day or just life in general….

doing the things we normally do in the way we normally do them.

And so far so good because our routines work and the flow around us is pretty much on the same program with us and suddenly we enter foreign territory and we do something we have always done in the appropriate way and ….

bam….

some crazy red rocket of a bus comes blasting out of nowhere and hopefully we have a good support group around us to grab hold of some piece of us and yell…

!!!!!!!!!!!! BUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or at least come soon enough to pick up the pieces of all that is shaken and hold us while we pull ourselves back up on to our feet.

So travel in groups people.

We are in a  foreign land and we need one another to navigate the journey safely.

That’s all for today.

Be blessed as you travel and watch out for buses <3